Violent Children | Introduction
On March 24, 1998, Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden arrived at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas, with an arsenal of highpowered firearms. Andrew pulled the school’s fire alarm and the two boys waited for students and teachers to file out of the building before they opened fire. The boys killed four students and one teacher and wounded fifteen others. At the time of their arrests, Johnson was thirteen and Golden was eleven.
Compounding the horror of the events in Jonesboro is the fact that it is just another violent episode on a growing list of similar school shootings committed by children. On October 1, 1997, sixteen-year-old Luke Woodham killed two students in his Pearl, Mississippi, high school. On December 1, 1997, fourteen-year-old Michael Carneal killed three students and wounded eight others at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky. And on May 21, 1998, fifteen-year-old Kipland Kinkel opened fire in a crowded cafeteria at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, killing two students and wounding twenty-two others. Kinkel had murdered both his parents the previous night.
A generation out of control?
Many observers feel that these school shootings are part of a larger problem. According to Congressman Bill McCollum, “Violent juvenile crime is a national epidemic. Today’s superpredators are feral, presocial beings with no sense of right and wrong.” “For the past decade, juvenile felons have become younger and more vicious,” declares Minnesota state representative Charlie Weaver. Authors James Alan Fox and Glenn Pierce argue that the “most significant change in the youth population has been in attitude. This new generation . . . is more inclined to resort to violence over trivial issues . . . or for no apparent reason.” Fox and Pierce believe this is because many youths, particularly those in major urban centers, are “beset with idleness” and that a “growing number of teens . . . see few attractive alternatives to violence, drug use, and gang membership.”
Other critics, however, feel that the juvenile crime rate has been exaggerated. Writer Annette Fuentes points out that “youth crime has not changed as dramatically as our perceptions of it.” In the June 15, 1998, issue of the Nation, Fuentes cites a 1997 survey by the National Center for Juvenile Justice which found that “today’s violent youth commits the same number of violent acts as his/her predecessor of 15 years ago.” Fuentes feels that today’s youth are the target of an anti-teen campaign being waged by politicians and the media, and that the shootings in Jonesboro and elsewhere are merely isolated incidents that have received a lion’s share of media coverage. Fuentes contends that coverage of a small number of violent incidents, along with the views of politicians like Congressman Bill McCollum, have fueled the public’s erroneous perception that youth violence is out of control.
Nevertheless, other statistics indicate that America’s children are becoming more violent. The National Center for Juvenile Justice studied juvenile crime trends from 1982 to 1992, and in 1995 released a report detailing an increase of 57 percent in the arrest rates for murder, forcible rape, and robbery among juveniles. The arrest rate for aggravated assault during that ten-year span went up 100 percent. Most disturbingly, the report predicts that the worst is yet to come. They projected an increase of 101 percent in the arrest rate for violent crime among children by 2010. In addition to proposing and passing legislation to stiffen the penalties for violent juvenile offenders, many lawmakers and social critics are asking: What causes children to become so cold-hearted and aggressive?
Pop culture
Much of the blame for the rise in violent crime among children has been laid on American popular culture. Many critics point out that children are steeped in media violence from a very early age. In this view, the constant bombardment of violent television programming, popular music, video games, and movies have desensitized children to the consequences of violent behavior. According to David Grossman,
To have a child of three, four, or five watch a “splatter” movie, learning to relate to a character for the first 90 minutes and then in the last 30 minutes watch helplessly as that new friend is hunted and brutally murdered is the moral and psychological equivalent of introducing your child to a friend, letting her play with that friend, and then butchering that friend in front of your child’s eyes. And this happens hundreds upon hundreds of times.
Gangsta rap has long been a popular target for pop culture critics. Many feel that performers like TuPac Shakur glorify violence and the street gang culture, and critics contend that rap groups encourage children to solve their problems with violence. “Few adults have any idea how violent and venomous some of these lyrics are,” says Senator Sam Brownback. Brownback points to the connection between violent gangsta rap groups and the shooting in Jonesboro. Mitchell Johnson had become a fan of Tu- Pac Shakur and the group Bone Thugs ~N~ Harmony, and often quoted the violent lyrics. Johnson’s mother and his teachers noticed that he became obsessed with street gang culture. He often flashed street gang hand signals in the school hallways and bragged to schoolmates that he belonged to a national gang called the Bloods. Mitchell himself has claimed that he may have been influenced by the music’s violent themes.
Kids and guns
Some observers, however, believe that the causes of juvenile violence lie elsewhere. Robert E. Shepherd Jr. contends that the perceived rise in juvenile violence is partly due to the easy availability of guns. In 1997 Shepherd wrote, “While juveniles of even 15 years ago exhibited many of the same tendencies to confrontation and poor impulse control we see today, their access to firearms was much more limited. The bruises and cuts of a decade ago are more likely to be gunshot wounds today.” He believes that much of the violent crime committed by juveniles today could be avoided if children did not have such easy access to guns. Studies indicate that most children who have carried a gun to school have obtained the weapon from their home. Several of the ten weapons used in the Jonesboro shooting belonged to Andrew Golden’s grandfather, an Arkansas wildlife official. Both Andrew and Mitchell had been trained in the use of firearms and in hunting from a very early age. Investigators noted the chilling skill and accuracy that Johnson and Golden exhibited in the shooting spree: Of the thirty-six rounds the boys fired, they scored twenty-seven hits.
Dysfunctional families and juvenile violence
Some social critics contend that dysfunctional families influence aggressive behavior in children. According to counselor Tammy Bell, children who come from painful family situations tend to become vengeful. Bell points out that growing up in a household with little or no parental supervision tends to make a child “more negative, more angry, more disrespectful,” and this seems to have been the case with Mitchell Johnson. Even before Mitchell’s parents divorced in 1994, the Johnson house was a troubled one. Frequent visitors to the Johnson home report that the family lived in squalor. Mitchell regularly went long periods of time without parental supervision. His parents would occasionally lose track of him and the police would have to be called to track him down. Mitchell’s situation did not improve much after his parents divorced. When Mitchell’s mother moved to Arkansas she married Terry Woodard, an ex-convict with a history of drug and firearms violations.
Other experts argue that Bell’s view is not entirely accurate. Psychologist Michael Schulman points out that many children who grew up in troubled homes do not go on to commit violent crimes, and that violent children can come from a variety of backgrounds, as the Jonesboro case illustrates. While Mitchell Johnson did come from a broken home and a troubled family background, Andrew Golden did not. By all accounts, the Goldens were a typical, hardworking American family. Andrew was raised in a financially stable, two-parent household and was showered with love and encouragement. Despite this background, he was a willing accomplice to Mitchell Johnson in the Jonesboro shootings.
Are the shootings in Jonesboro part of a larger trend in youth violence? The group most associated with juvenile violence in America are males aged 15 to 19. Several of the school shootings involved boys this age, although some were even younger. However, an even more ominous statistic is that by 2010 the male population between the ages of 15 and 19 will increase by 30 percent. This has led many social observers to predict that the United States is headed for a youth crime wave of unprecedented proportions. If this is indeed the case, then understanding why children are becoming more violent will be the first step toward reversing that trend. In At Issue: Violent Children, various commentators consider the root causes of violent behavior in young people.
